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A Chorus Line (1985)

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34 out of 45 people found the following comment useful :-
Ghandi, 2 February 2005

Author: Donald Agustamarian from London, England

I wonder who, how and more importantly why the decision to call Richard Attenborough to direct the most singular sensation to hit Broadway in many many years? He's an Academy Award winning director. Yes, he won for Ghandi you moron! Jeremy Irons is an Academy winning actor do you want to see him play Rocky Balboa? He has experience with musicals. Really? "Oh what a lovely war" have you forgotten? To answer your question, yes! The film is a disappointment, clear and simple. Not an ounce of the live energy survived the heavy handedness of the proceedings. Every character danced beautifully they were charming but their projection was theatrical. I felt nothing. But when I saw it on stage I felt everything. The film should have been cast with stars, unknown, newcomers but stars with compelling unforgettable faces even the most invisible of the group. Great actors who could dance beautifully. Well Michael Douglas was in it. True I forgot I'm absolutely wrong and you are absolutely right. Nothing like a Richard Attenborough Michael Douglas musical.

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24 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
Not the singular sensation it should have been, 27 October 2004
Author: divaclv

If you've never seen a stage production of "A Chorus Line" (no small feat, since it was not only once the longest running show on Broadway but has had extensive touring and regional exposure), then the movie version is perhaps better than nothing. However, an acquaintance with the source material makes one realize how much the film falls short of the power of the original.

Michael Bennett's magnum opus was conceived as a tribute to "gypsies"--Broadway chorus dancers--and in a way, to the every bodies and nobodies from all walks of life. The characters in "Chorus Line" are not rich or famous, nor are they likely to be, and over the course of the story they bare legs, heart and soul just for the chance to be one body in a unified, faceless corps. Bennett brought out each dancer's individuality, making each a loving, well-defined portrait of a human being with all the hopes and dreams, problems and shames that everyone has but nobody ever sees. But director Richard Attenborough undermines this essential concept in two very distinct ways.

First, there is the presence of Michael Douglas as Zach, the choreographer who puts the auditioning dancers through the paces. Granted, if one must have a "name" actor in "A Chorus Line" then this is the place for it--Zach neither sings nor dances, and exists mostly as a God-like voice issuing from the dark of the auditorium. But Douglas' very presence overshadows the dancers, who should be the heart and soul of the show. True, his name is listed in the credits alphabetically with everyone else's, but every time the camera's on him we go "Hey, that's Michael Douglas," pulling our focus from where it should be.

Also pulling focus is the undue emphasis Attenborough puts on Cassie, the veteran dancer who was once Zach's lover. Although Zach and Cassie's relationship is a part of the stage show, it is but once facet among the many stories told over the evening. Attenborough makes Cassie the central part of the film, shortchanging several other characters in order to provide flashbacks of her life with Zach and her former glory days as a featured dancer. She's even given the eleven o'clock number "What I Did For Love," a song that originally was written as the dancers' anthem to pursuing the dream of Broadway without regret but is here employed as just another torch ballad. (Composer Marvin Hamlish and lyricist Edward Kleban have expressed dissatisfaction with this song, claiming the lyrics were too generalized; its misuse here unfortunately proves their point.) Near the end of the film, when Cassie tells Zach that all the dancers on stage are special, the words ring hollow, not only because of all the screen time she's gotten but because (unlike the stage version) she's been backstage and away from the audition for the majority of the proceedings.

Now and then, one gets a glimpse of what "A Chorus Line" should be. The dancing is good and photographed well, and the music (though over synthesized for the film and sung by mostly mediocre voices) still has impact. But this landmark musical deserved a far more memorable and worthy screen incarnation than it has been given.

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15 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Stage to screen unsuccessful, 12 November 2004
Author: thespis75 from New York, NY

Having seen, studied, read, and researched ACL and Michael Bennett, I have to say that the show does not translate well to the screen. The movie is 'good' at best, but completely loses much of what made ACL so successful on Broadway. The constant swipes to Cassie (taking a cab into the city; talking with Larry; etc) were completely unnecessary, and many of the great songs and monologues were shortened or (worse) cut altogether! Whereas I like Michael Douglas, I feel that he was a poor choice for Zach. Michael Douglas should not have been cast as Zach for the exact same reason Kevin Kline was not cast as Zach in the original production: he couldn't dance.

I often wonder if Michael Bennett would have approved of this film.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
A Pale Imitation of the Original..., 30 November 2005

Author: ijonesiii from United States

For those who never saw A CHORUS LINE onstage and their only exposure to the story was this film, this film is OK as movie musicals, nothing special, just OK. I have seen the show on Broadway 4 times and even auditioned for a touring company of the show once and for someone who pretty much memorized the original production, the 1985 film version is so dreadful on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. First of all, for those who have never auditioned for a theatrical production, let me assure you that IRL when you audition for a play, the director, producer, and choreographer never ask personal questions and don't give a crap about why you wanted to become a performer. A real theatrical audition, whether it be for a play or a musical, rarely takes more than five minutes. If you're auditioning as a dancer, you get shown a 64-bar dance combination once, you do it, and then they decide immediately whether you're in or out. Michael Bennett's original concept of the show was to flesh out the lives of dancers and introduce to the uninitiated the passion for performing and why so many sacrifice so much for so little. The play is about these dancers. First of all, director Richard Attenborough took so much focus off the dancers by beefing up the Cassie/Zach relationship and by casting Michael Douglas as Zach. In the play, you NEVER see Zach...he is just a voice in the back of the theater and his relationship with Cassie is barely touched upon. Cassie shown in the cab in traffic trying to get to the audition and upstairs talking to Larry (a character who is not even in the play)was all added for the movie and took so much focus off what the story is about. Major musical numbers were cut or rethought. The opening number in the play "I Hope I Get It" shows all of the dancers doing a jazz and ballet combination and then people get eliminated. In the movie they jam three hundred dancers onstage together and show them in closeup to disguise the fact that they have cast people in the film who can't dance (can you say "Audrey Landers"). "Goodbye 12, Goodbye 13, Hello Love", a brilliant vocal exploration of these dancers' childhood's jaundiced memories was reworked as "Surprise, Surprise" mainly a vehicle for the late Gregg Burge as Richie. The show's most famous song, "What I Did for Love" which in the show was a touching allegory sung by the entire cast about what they give up to dance, becomes just another standard love song in the film, performed tiredly by a miscast Allyson Reed as Cassie. Jeffrey Hornaday's choreography for the film is dull and unimaginative and doesn't hold a candle to Michael Bennett' original staging and when you're making a movie about dancers, the choreography has to be special. There are a couple of good dancers in the film, the previously mentioned Gregg Burge as Richie, Michelle Johnston as Bebe, and Janet Jones as Judy, but they are hardly given the opportunity to show what they can do, yet Audrey Landers, who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, is given one of the show's best numbers, "Dance 10, Looks 3." I will admit that the finale, "One" is dazzling, but you have to wait almost two hours for that. I would say that if you never saw A CHORUS LINE onstage, this film might be worth a look, but if you are a devotee of the original Broadway musical...be afraid...be very afraid.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Best musical of all time on Broadway to a mangled mess of celluloid, 15 March 2006

Author: tscahill from United States

I saw the original "Chorus Line" on Broadway God knows how many times and felt the passion, despair and joy come from this live experience in the theater. Michael Bennett knew he would have to re-imagine "Chorus" for the screen but could never figure out how to do it. If the man who came up with the show is stumped - that should answer your question. There are some shows that are simply made to be seen live - with an audience. However, Richard Attenborough fresh of the musical work of "Ghandi" and dancing with animals in "Doctor Doolittle" ended up directing this film which bore little to no resemblance to the stage show. Horrible songs were added (Surprise! Surprise!), great songs were dropped or given to other characters (which didn't make sense). Michael Douglas was mis-cast. People that couldn't dance tried to act and there was the sexy "Landers" woman who couldn't sing, act, or dance - I guess she had just finished being Ghandi's wife. The dances by Jeffrey Hornaday look like nothing more than schlock from "Flashdance" rejects and nothing works. I sat there stunned at how something so riveting and emotional could be drained to nothing. If you truly love this show and it is coming back to Broadway in 2006 - see it but don't think that the long running musical event that was "A Chorus Line" has any thing at all to do with this film.

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15 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
One Singular Disaster, 6 May 2004

Author: ulalame from Los Angeles, CA

I admit to having been a fan of the original stage production. I never saw the movie version until very lately on cable, and watched it with anticipation, to see my memories brought alive again, because I adored the original show. Imagine my dismay.

This has to be the worst translation of a Broadway show to film ever made. They changed the story, they changed the songs, they lost the soul. I was expecting a trip down memory lane, singing to the extraordinarily touching Music and the Mirror, At the Ballet, and Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen. Not! Not only did they adulterate the music to an almost unrecognizable point, but they messed up the storyline, adding songs and exterior plotlines (hello Cassie and Michael Douglas) not present in the original, and injecting "drama" where it wasn't necessary. The original had enough pathos on its own. If you were a fan of the original Broadway show, don't bother. I'm sorry I wasted my time, and diluted my memories, watching this tripe.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The critics were wrong!, 14 January 2004
Author: TC Raymond from England

Uncool as it may be, I think A Chorus Line may well be one of the best stage-to-film musical adaptations ever made. It looks dazzling, the casting is inspired (Douglas is the only weak link, but then he doesn't have a lot to do apart from sulking and losing his temper occasionally) and the score is powerful and energetic - even the reverb-heavy Miami Vice-type drums don't grate on the ears as much as they might. However, if you don't find watching a bunch of terrific singers and dancers strutting their stuff for almost two hours an appealing prospect, don't even go there.

Unfairly slammed by the critics and released at a time when film musicals were very much out of favour, A Chorus Line has nonetheless attracted a loyal fanbase who are willing to overlook its occasional dud moments (the camera drifts off into darkness during 'Everything Was Beautiful At The Ballet', which makes you wonder exactly what Attenborough's intention here was) and just enjoy the company of a dynamic bunch working their socks off for our enjoyment. Alyson Reed was superbly cast as the faded star Cassie, because she's every bit as charismatic and sympathetic as her reputation suggests - try taking your eyes off her during her audition scenes, it's not easy! The standout songs, for my money, are 'Surprise' (sorry if this rubs against the grain, but that man has an AMAZING voice), 'Nothing' and the final glitzy reprise of 'One'. I'd have liked to have seen the film make a bigger deal of the beautiful 'What I Did For Love', but that's a minor quibble in the midst of such great entertainment. A Chorus Line is a great film to watch on a dull evening, as it will lift your spirits and make you feel better about everything. And if you have a cynical disposition, you can just enjoy the one-liners...

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Rough-Edged, 27 July 2001

Author: João Loff from Lisbon, Portugal

A strange picture, as it peels the outer rims of human feelings and aims straight for the raw. Auditioning for a Broadway stage musical are hundreds of youngsters who dream with a place in the limelight. The plot, you can imagine, is basically an audition, with all its highs and lows. And when I say it has raw feelings, i'm talking about the cold process of selection, which is encarnated by the obscure character of Michael Douglas, who, in the obscurity of the audience, with only a little light next to him, says who stays and who goes, even if he has to be brutal sometimes ("Then don't dance!!!", he says shouting to a girl who didn't have any dance classes). The result is a film sustained by the different phases of selection and the suspense of who is going to be a star and who has to leave, which, altogether, will charm only dance-addicts and everyone who would like to be in one of these shows one day.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
a corpse maligned, 20 August 2007

Author: onepotato2 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I'm not a stage purist. A movie could have been made of this play, and it would almost necessarily require changes... comme ci, comme ca. But the modest conceits of this material are lost or misunderstood by the movie's creators who are in full-on "shallow blockbuster" mode. It would be hard to imagine a worse director. Perhaps only Josh Logan & Jack Warner could have ruined this in the same way Attenborough did.

Onstage A Chorus line was a triumph of workshopping as a production method. Dancers answering a casting call found themselves sitting around shooting the crap about their stage-career experiences (very 70s!). Then Bennett and Hamlisch took some time, handed them a song and cast them as themselves. ...astonishing! Unbelievably modern. The 'story'of ACL is (in turn) about answering a casting call for a play we never have a complete view of, because the play doesn't matter. It was meta before the idea was invented, 25 years before Adaptation noodled with a similar idea. ACL was also another in a reductivist trend that is still alive, & which is a hallmark of modern creativity: that technique itself is compelling... that there's more drama in an average person's life than you could ever synthesize with invented characters. What a gracious idea. The stage play had one performance area (an empty stage) and three different ways to alter the backdrop, to alleviate visual tedium, not to keep viewers distracted. The space recedes and the actors stories are spotlighted. It worked just fine. That was the point. All these ideas are trampled or bastardized. Set-wise, there wasn't one, and no costumes either until the the dancers came out for their final bows, in which the exhilarating "One" is finally, powerfully, performed in full (gold) top hats and tails, with moves we recognize because we've watched them in practice sessions. The pent-up anxiety of the play is released --- and audiences went nuts.

After Grampa manhandles this, it's like a mushed, strangled bird. He clearly has the earlier, respected All that Jazz (and Fosse's stage piece Dancin') in mind as he makes his choices. Hamlisch's score was edgy & interesting for it's time, but time has not been kind to it. It's as schmaltzy as "jazz hands." And that's before Attenborough ever touches it. He's remarkable at finding whatever good was left, and mangling it.

A simple question might have helped Attenborough while filming this, "Could I bear spending even a few minutes with people like these?" A major issue for any adaptation of the play is how the 4th wall of theater (pivotal by it's absence in theater) would be addressed in the film format. There's never been a more "frontal" play. The answer they came up with was, "I'm sorry.. what was the question?" The cast has been augmented from a manageable number of unique narratives, to a crowd suffocating each other and the audience, and blending their grating selves together. I was well past my annoyance threshold when that annoying little runt swings across the stage on a rope, clowning at the (absent) audience. The play made you understand theater people. This movie just makes you want to choke them.

Perhaps Broadways annoying trend of characters walking directly to stage center and singing their stories at the audience (Les Miz, Miss Saigon) instead of relating to other characters started here. But the worst imaginable revival of the play will make you feel more alive than this movie.

A Chorus Line is pure schlock.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Why this movie fails so badly, 19 May 2006

Author: middleburg

On Broadway, A Chorus Line was pure magic. From the second the show opened with a spectacular burst of energy to the truly grand finale, a joyous curtain call of all those chorus members who we grew to love during the course of the show, we were totally engaged - captivated by the intensely personal stories, some funny, some clever, some stirring, of this chorus line. The movie is another matter entirely. The focus is now on the director - and WHAT an ogre he is! Every time the film switches to Michael Douglas, there he is with a bitter, sour expression, barking out questions and orders, screaming and yelling whenever he gets the chance. Yikes!! That changes the dynamics of the story. On Broadway, the director was indeed an imperious offstage presence, but he was also sort of a theatrical device to allow the stories of these amazing strong/fragile/intriguing/hilarious chorus line members to be told with insight and clarity. There is a reason this work won the Pulitzer Prize! And actually in one of the only moments the director appears, he is there to comfort the young Puerto Rican Dancer after we hear that dancer's heart-breaking story. He appears again to ultimately express his genuine affection/ concern for Cassie. But in the movie, from the second Douglas' director starts bitterly barking orders, the chorus line members' stories become secondary. It's like they are in a lousy profession, where a jaded director instead of showing the joy at creating a new exciting theatrical show, is jaded, exhausted, furious at having to audition these chorus members. On stage, there was ALWAYS the excitement of the show. Here in the movie practically from the word go, you feel sorry for everyone involved. During the course of the musical, we desperately wished every single one of those chorus members well, and how happy we would have been if they had all gotten the job! But of course that couldn't happen. But in the Finale when they all came back in glorious costume with those amazing spinning mirrors on stage, sometimes reflecting us in the audience, in our hearts, and we know, also in the hearts of all those chorus members both accepted and rejected, they were on stage forever dancing in a profession they loved so much, bringing magic to the theatre. In the movie, after all the misplaced story lines and emphasis, that magic becomes totally diluted. All we feel (even with the exact same curtain call), is that some of the members got a job with a mean-spirited director. So they all come on the screen and are dancing again. Big deal.

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